Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes | 18 523

Opportunity Information: Apply for 18 523

The National Science Foundation (NSF) grant opportunity titled Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes 2.0 (CRISP 2.0) is a research solicitation focused on strengthening the resilience of the United States' critical infrastructures by funding deeply integrated, transdisciplinary work. It sits within NSF's broader Risk and Resilience activity and was shaped by the recognition that recent large-scale disasters, including Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, exposed major vulnerabilities and cascading failures across essential systems. The program is also designed to reflect NSF's emphasis on "convergence" research, meaning proposals are expected to go beyond simple collaboration and instead fuse methods, concepts, and expertise across fields to create new frameworks capable of addressing complex societal challenges.

At the center of CRISP 2.0 is the idea that critical infrastructures are not isolated assets but interconnected networks of systems and processes that continuously deliver essential goods and services such as power, water, transportation, communications, and others. For the purposes of this competition, infrastructures are considered interdependent when they rely on one another to function or when the way one infrastructure delivers services can significantly affect another. The solicitation is explicitly interested in these interdependencies because they can amplify risk, create cascading disruptions, and complicate recovery, but they can also potentially be leveraged to create redundancy, substitution options, and smarter designs that improve overall service continuity during shocks.

CRISP 2.0 has three high-level goals. First, it aims to build and sustain a genuine interdisciplinary research community where engineers work synergistically with social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) scientists to rethink how infrastructures are designed, managed, and governed as service-delivery processes, not just physical systems. Second, it seeks to transform multiple fields by reframing interdependent infrastructures as dynamic processes and services that may complement one another or substitute for one another under stress, which is a key resilience concept when one system can partially cover for another during disruptions. Third, it aims to produce practical innovations that measurably improve quality of life, support economic growth, and help infrastructures withstand and recover from both internal disruptions (like equipment failures, capacity constraints, operational errors) and external shocks (natural hazards, technological accidents, and human-induced events).

The solicitation lists several specific research objectives that proposals are expected to address. These include generating new knowledge and solution approaches that improve the ability of both existing and future interdependent critical infrastructure systems (ICIs) to adapt to change and recover from disruptions. It also emphasizes creating new theoretical frameworks and multidisciplinary models that can model, monitor, and predict complex infrastructure behavior under stress, including cascading failures and unintended consequences across interconnected systems. Another major objective is developing integrative frameworks that explicitly characterize interdependencies and show how those interdependencies can be managed or leveraged to enhance service delivery and resilience. Importantly, CRISP 2.0 requires serious attention to human and institutional factors by encouraging research that examines socioeconomic, cultural, political, legal, psychological, and other barriers that prevent resilience improvements, along with strategies to overcome them. Finally, the program supports work that creates, curates, and uses publicly accessible infrastructure data, recognizing that progress in modeling and decision-making depends heavily on better data availability and responsible data practices.

A core requirement is that funded projects must study at least two interdependent infrastructures in relation to one or more shared services, with the intent of contributing to a new interdisciplinary research paradigm for ICIs. The program is not limited to a single technical domain; instead, it is structured to force meaningful integration between engineering and SBE perspectives. Because of that, NSF states clearly that proposals lacking both at least one engineer and at least one SBE scientist on the project team will be returned without review. While engineering and SBE integration is the minimum, teams are encouraged to add complementary expertise from areas such as computing and data science, statistics, ecology, seismology, and other relevant disciplines when those perspectives strengthen the work.

Administratively, this is an NSF discretionary grant program (Funding Opportunity Number 18-523) under CFDA numbers 47.041 and 47.075. The agency anticipated making around 18 awards under this solicitation. The original closing date listed for proposals was March 7, 2018, and the solicitation was created on December 6, 2017. The opportunity description does not specify a fixed award ceiling in the provided text (it appears as 0), which typically means applicants need to refer to the full solicitation details for budget expectations and any limits by project type.

Overall, CRISP 2.0 is designed for teams that can jointly tackle the technical, organizational, economic, and behavioral dimensions of infrastructure resilience, with a strong expectation that the result will be new models, new design and management concepts, better data resources, and actionable insights that help communities and decision-makers improve the continuity and reliability of essential services under real-world stress.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Critical Resilient Interdependent Infrastructure Systems and Processes" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 47.041, 47.075.
• This funding opportunity was created on Dec 06, 2017.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Mar 07, 2018. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 18 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for 18 523

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: